Post navigation

What book are you reading?

UCLA recently got a new university librarian, Ginny Steel, who had her first day on Monday. I appreciated that she had an all-staff meeting that very same day to talk to us about her plans and also to get feedback from us on our thoughts and priorities. Much of the hour and a half meeting was questions from the staff. I had one of those “yup, I’m totally in the right profession” moments when one of the questions from the staff was “what’s your favorite book?” Where else but a library would you hear a question like that at an all-staff meeting with a new leader? She answered the question in the same way I had when posed the same question a week or two earlier: how can you pick just one? With all the great books I’ve read, there’s no way I could select one above the others. When she said as much, the staff person asked her what she was currently reading. She said a book about Chicago – I believe the title was The Third Coast.

I really like hearing what people are reading. The only problem is that many times the answer turns out to be something very interesting, and then I look it up and it sounds incredible, so naturally I have to get a copy, and then it gets put on top of my ever-expanding pile of to-be-read treasures. Nonetheless, I’m curious to know what you, the blog readers, are reading. If there are still any of you left after my long blog absence!

Currently I’m in the middle of three books:

The Gold Bug Variations: I was reading this book while sitting alone in a restaurant for lunch, and the waiter asked me what it was about. I was fairly certain that he probably didn’t want to hear the 10 minute-long microbiology, music, and literature lecture that it would take to explain the book. So after a moment’s hesitation, I replied, “it’s about DNA, Bach music, and librarians.” He said it sounded like something he would like, so I guess the was a good enough description. I won’t bore any of you readers with the lecture either, but encourage you to check it out of you like fairly intellectual novels and any/all of the three aforementioned items.

Van Gogh: The Life: I was so fortunate to get to visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam recently, and it was quite an incredible experience, especially in how educational it was. I obviously had seen pictures of many Van Gogh paintings before, but never so many of the real thing in one place. I also only knew the broad strokes of his life – crazy, cut off his ear, etc. The information that went along with the pictures revealed a much more nuanced view of his life. I left feeling awed by the fact that he hadn’t even started painting until he was almost 30, and even more awed that he generally lacked any sort of innate artistic talent, and only achieved such great success as he did by creating prolifically and doggedly persisting at his craft in the face of constant rejection, even from his own family. As soon as I left the museum, I got right on Amazon and looked for the best biography I could find, and found this one. It’s a hefty tome – almost 1000 pages – but really an enjoyable read. I’m not generally a biography person, but I’m really liking this.

Dry Tears: I also had a chance to visit the Anne Frank House when I was in Amsterdam, also a moving experience. Earlier that year I’d read Man’s Search For Meaningby Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who had survived Auschwitz. As with Van Gogh’s life, I really only had a general sense of the history surrounding the Holocaust. One of the things I’ve never understood is how the Nazis ever got so many people to go along with such crazy things. I stumbled upon an online course on Coursera, called The Holocaust, that includes readings on history and Holocaust literature, as well as movies and documentaries. The course started Monday and I checked out the first few items from the reading list today. This is the first of the books, and so far I’m finding it very interesting. I don’t know if there’s really a good answer for why people did what they did at that time, but I’m hoping I’ll at least learn a little more about what life was like at that time.